Super important work by Tim Kuiper and co!

Great opportunity to lead discussions in biodiversity conservation for ECRs

Great project, with a great team!

Closing tomorrow! Last chance to apply for postdoc to explore the role of animals in savanna ecosystem productivity & nutrient cycling! Link to job: tinyurl.com/53dy4584 #savanna #termites #largemammals

Pretty simple instructions to follow

The "great whale conveyer belt" that transports nitrogen, carbon, and biomass from high latitude feeding grounds to concentrated low latitude breeding grounds in gray, humpback, and right whales.

Lovely figure by A. Boersma
doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Sure to be an interesting talk by @andrebellve.bsky.social.. also, be prepared for some excellent graphics! #scicomm

Beautiful sighting of a martial eagle eating a mongoose at iSimangaliso park today

Half of British households feed birds.. but should we? Ft our recent study on potential issues of nutrient pollution.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Full paper: esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Nice coverage by Nat Geo of our new paper quantifying the longest nutrient transport system in the world: whale pee

www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/arti...

For the full paper, see here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We recap the whole study here: whalescientists.com/the-great-wh...

Our world is connected in many more ways than we think! Many thanks to a fabulous co-author team, led by Joe Roman @jjkiszka.bsky.social @luishuckstadt.bsky.social

But, industrial whaling has decimated whale populations, reducing this vital ecosystem process by about two-thirds. Today, conservation efforts have partially re-established the Great Whale Conveyor Belt, although climate change poses a new threat.

The whale-derived nutrients help support nutrient-poor tropical lagoon ecosystems, such as coral reefs. In Hawaii, we calculate that nutrient release by whales is ~1.5x more than abiotic processes, such as upwelling.

Each year, the whales undertake long migrations to give birth to their calves in warm tropical lagoons. In doing so, they transport vast quantities of nutrients such as nitrogen and release these in their urine, placenta and carcasses.

Whales spend their summers feeding in cold, nutrient-rich waters at high-latitude locations such as Alaska or Antarctica. During this time they build vast energy reserves and store this as blubber.

The Great Whale Conveyor Belt - Earth's largest mammals keep the oceans thriving!

Our new study quantifies the world's longest nutrient-transport system as whales migrate across vast ocean basins.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

So what actually happened when the dinosaurs died?🦕

Using simple ecological rules*, we explore how the interplay between ecosystem engineering, seed size and light environment can explain temporal patterns of animal and seed sizes from the fossil record🌳🐘🐀🌱

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

A great thread by @alexanderlees.bsky.social on the positive and negative impacts of bird feeding, including our recent paper highlighting issues of nutrient pollution and changes to local biogeochemical cycles:

esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...).

Nice coverage of our recent paper on using animal death as a rational approach to improve zoo population management: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

@pnas.org @econovoau.bsky.social @aarhusuni.bsky.social

Image credit: Frank Rønsholt;

23. We must instead take responsibility for the welfare-oriented way in which animals live and die under our care, while educating the broader public about the biological and ethical reasons for using death as an effective and sustainable population-management strategy.

22. We live at a time when outsourcing unpleasant truths about animal deaths is no longer adequate. To do so shirks our duty of care to species under human protection—in the interest of minimising presumed backlash from the public.

21. There are circumstances when planned mortality is most appropriate. Clearly, it should be an option when zoo capacity is full. The more vulnerable a population is to extinction, the more important that its reproduction is not to be halted and that robust population structures are maintained.